B 
109 

006 


The 

:wish    Primary   School 


A    LECTURE 

By 
LOUIS    GlNZBERG 

Delivered  in   the   Course   of  Public   Lectures 

of  the 

Jewish  Theological  Seminary  of  America 
January  31,  1907 


Reprint  from 
THE  JEWISH  EXPONENT 


THE  JEWISH  PRIMARY  SCHOOL. 


The  development  of  the  intellect  is  the  development  of 
man,  says  Auguste  Comte,  one  of  the  profoundest  think- 
ers of  modern  times.  He  does  not  fail  to  recognize  the 
momentous  influence  exerted  by  factors  other  than  men- 
tality entering  into  the  evolution  of  society,  but  he  wished 
to  emphasize  this  point,  that  whether  a  single  nation  is  to 
be  appraised,  or  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  mankind  as  a 
whole,  it  is  in  every  case  intellectual  attainment  by  which 
the  degree  of  development  must  be  gauged.  In  point  of 
fact,  it  is,  as  Comte  says,  "the  heart  that  propounds  all 
questions ;  to  solve  them  is  the  part  of  the  intellect."  An 
old  Palestinian  saying  quoted  in  the  Talmud  puts  the 
same  idea  in  empiric  form :  "He  who  has  knowledge,  has 
everything;  he  who  lackj  knowledge,  lacks  everything." 
And  this  proverb  in  turn  is  an  epigrammatic  summing 
up  of  the  Biblical  notion  of  the  Hakam,  "the  wise,"  "the 
knowing  one,"  who  is  at  the  same  time  the  good  and 
pious  man,  the  just,  the  God-fearing,  the  truthful,  and 
the  pure. 

Because  writers  take  too  little  account  of  this  general 
historical  principle  set  up  by  Comte,  and  at  the  same 
time  are  blind  to  the  peculiarity  of  Jewish  history  in  par- 
ticular, a  misunderstanding  has  arisen  regarding  the  na- 
ture of  the  transition  from  the  Prophets  to  the  Scribes, 
from  Biblical  Judaism  to  Rabbinical  Judaism.  The  in- 
tellectual endeavors  of  the  Scribes  are  apt  to  be  consid- 
ered as  a  degeneration  and  decline  from  the  idealism 
which  pervades  the  conception  of  life  laid  dbwn  in  the 
Scriptures.  The  truth  is  that  the  Scribes  succeeded 
where  the  Prophets  had  failed.  Through  them  the  teach- 
ings proclaimed  in  the  schools  of  the  Prophets  were 


20938?.' 


K, 


4  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

disseminated  as  the  common  property  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple. 

That  paganism  was  stamped  out  among  the  Jews,  to- 
gether with  the  immorality  that  accompanied  it,  is  essen- 
tially the  achievement  of  the  first  great  Scribe,  Ezra,  and 
of  his  associates.  And,  again,  if  three  centuries  after  Ezra 
the  defeat  of  degenerate  Hellenism  by  the  Maccabees  was 
a  possibility,  it  was  only  because  the  Scribes,  by  .their 
constant  devotion,  had  permeated  a  whole  nation  with  the 
love  of  their  ideals. 

In  spite  of  the  many  vicissitudes  to  which  the  Jewish 
people  has  been  subjected  during  nearly  twenty  centuries 
of  dispersion,  its  intellectual  development  has  suffered  no 
interruption.  Under  the  leadership  of  the  Scribes,  masses 
of  the  people  were  ready  to  defend  the  prophetical  ideals 
at  every  cost  and  hazard — the  same  masses  that  had  as- 
sumed an  indifferent,  if  not  a  hostile,  attitude  toward  the 
living  words  of  the  Prophets.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
the  victory  of  the  intellect  was  not  gained  at  a  single  blow. 
The  Am  ha-Arez  was  a  recognized  figure  in  Jewish  life 
exactly  at  the  time  when  the  Talmudist  stood  at  his  ze- 
nith. Theoretically  the  Am  ha-Arez  submitted  himself  en- 
tirely to  the  teachings  of  the  rabbis.  But  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  his  life  he  was  little  influenced  by  them, 
sometimes  he  was  even  filled  with  deadly  hatred  for  the 
exponents  of  Jewish  learning.  The  deep  veneration 
shown  the  scholar  among  the  Jews  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  the  extraordinary  respect  felt  for  the  educated  man, 
were  phenomena  that  co-existed,  and  were  bound  up  with 
a  wider  spread  of  knowledge  among  all  classes,  and  with 
a  deepening  of  religious  feeling  throughout  all  the  strata 
of  the  people.  The  last  link  in  this  long  chain  of  Jewish 
intellectual  development  is  the  Lamdan  as  the  dominant 
figure  in  Jewish  life,  especially  with  the  Ashkenazim, 
and  among  the  Ashkenazim  especially  in  Eastern  Europe. 

The  historical  process  just  described  comes  out  well 
in  the  popular  sayings  of  various  epochs.  To  this  day 
many  a  Polish  and  Russian  mother  soothes  her  child  with 
the  lullaby : 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  5 

\Yhat  is  the  best  Sehorah? 
My  baby  will  learn  Torah, 
Seforim  he  will  write  for  me, 
And  a  pious  Jew  he'll  always  be. 

In  Talmud  times  words  of  an  entirely  different  tenor 
were  likely  to  fall  upon  the  ear  of  a  Jewish  child.  "O 
that  I  had  a  sage  in  my  power,  how  I'd  bite  him,"  was  a 
current  saying  in  the  early  days  of  the  rabbis.  And  if 
we  go  further  back  in  history,  to  Biblical  times,  we  find 
the  popular  characterization  of  the  leader  expressed  in 
such  harsh  words  as  "The  prophet  is  a  fool,  the  man 
that  hath  a  spirit  is  mad."  These  extreme  epochs  of 
Jewish  development  lie  worlds  apart.  But  even  two  ad- 
joining periods,  the  modern  and  the  mediaeval,  display  a 
striking  contrast.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  time  in  which 
the  Jewish  scholar  was  a  merchant  or  an  artisan,  to  the 
time  in  which  the  Jewish  merchant  or  artisan  was  a 
scholar.  In  the  Middle  Ages  there  was  no  learned  estate 
among  the  Jews,  because  the  number  of  scholars  was  not 
large  enough  to  constitute  a  separate  class.  In  Poland, 
later  on,  when  Jewish  culture  began  to  obtain  a  foot- 
hold there,  there  was  again  no  learned  estate,  because 
the  people  itself  was  a  nation  of  students.  Every  Jew 
was  either  a  teacher  or  a  pupil,  or  both  at  the  same  time. 
The  Lamdan  there  did  not  belong  to  a  peculiar  class,  he 
was  the  representative  par  excellence  of  the  people  as 
a  whole. 

The  many  centuries  lying  between  the  Prophet  and  the 
Lamdan  are  marked  by  two  apparently  incongruous  cur- 
rents. The  suffering  of  the  Jews  was  indescribable,  yet 
their  intellectual  development  proceeded  apace  without  in- 
terruption. They  are  the  enigma  of  history,  contradict- 
ing by  their  existence  the  principle  mens  sana  in  corpore 
sanv,  true  of  nations  as  well  as  individuals.  Their  en- 
slavement by  the  Persians,  the  tyrannous  oppression  of 
the  Greek  rulers,  the  cruelty  of  the  Romans,  and,  finally, 
the  persecutions  set  afoot  by  Holy  Mother  Church,  who 
was  so  concerned  about  the  salvation  of  the  Jew  that  she 


6  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

was  ever  ready  to  purchase  it  with  his  life — such  con- 
ditions make  one  exclaim  in  wonderment,  not  at  the  sur- 
vival of  the  Jew,  but  at  his  survival  unstunted. 

Our  sages  clothed  the  solution  of  the  riddle  in  the 
form  peculiar  to  them.  Once  upon  a  time,  they  say,  the 
heathen  philosopher,  Oinomaos  of  Gadara,  was  asked, 
"How  can  we  make  away  with  this  people?"  His  an- 
swer was :  "Go  about  and  observe  their  schools  and  acad- 
emies. So  long  as  the  clear  voices  of  children  ring 
forth  from  them,  you  will  not  be  able  to  touch  a  hair 
of  their  head.  For  thus  have  the  Jews  been  promised 
by  the  father  of  their  race:  'The  voice  is  Jacob's  voice, 
but  the  hands  are  the  hands  of  Esau.'  While  the  voice 
of  Jacob  resounds  in  the  schools  and  the  academies,  the 
hands  of  Esau  have  no  power  over  him." 

We  have  here  more  than  a  suggestive  interpretation  of 
a  Bible  text.  It  is  a  subtle  comment  on  an  historic  fact. 
The  school  is  the  most  original  institution  created  by 
post-Biblical  Judaism — a  magnificent  institution,  a  verit- 
able fortress  unshaken  by  the  storms  of  the  ages.  To 
borrow  a  simile  from  the  Midrash,  the  school  was  the 
heart  that  kept  watch  while  the  other  organs  slept. 

Like  the  beginning  of  all  genuine  life,  the  beginning 
of  the  Jewish  school  is  lost  in  the  mist  of  ancient  days. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  the  higher  school 
for  adults,  the  Bet  ha-Midrash,  or  house  of  study,  is  of 
earlier  origin  than  the  Bet  ha-Sefer,  the  elementary 
school.  The  Bet  ha-Midrash  was  the  sphere  in  which  the 
Soferim,  the  Scribes,  displayed  their  activity.  They  were 
the  guardians  of  literature  and  culture,  who  made  the 
Midrash,  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  their  special 
care  and  object.  For  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
trend  of  the  times  was  toward  religion.  Literary  interest 
was  determined  by  the  sacred  traditions.  By  the  side  of 
the  Soferim  were  the  Hakamim,  "the  sages,"  in  their 
Yeshibot,  their  conventicles.  Their  knowledge  was  based 
on  experience  and  practical  observation.  It  was  secular 
rather  than  religious.  These  "sages"  soon  disappeared. 
By  and  by  they  were  merged  into  the  class  of  the  scholars, 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  7 

the  Soferim.  That  happened  when  the  study  of  the 
Torah  was  enlarged  to  include  every  department  of  hu- 
man intellectual  endeavor.  By  the  second  half  of  the 
first  century  of  the  present  era,  if  not  considerably 
earlier,  Hakam,  "sage,"  had  become  the  accepted  designa- 
tion for  the  scholar. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  time  of  the  Men  of  the 
Great  Assembly,  another  name  for  the  old  Soferim,  that 
they  urged  the  duty  of  "raising  up  many  disciples." 
Once  this  idea  of  higher  education  had  taken  root,  and 
the  system  of  higher  schools  had  spread  as  a  net- 
work over  the  whole  country,  the  next  step  could  be 
taken,  the  problem  of  elementary  instruction  could  be 
considered.  A  well-authenticated  Talmudic  tradition  has 
this  to  say  upon  the  subject:  "In  the  ancient  days  every 
father  taught  his  own  son.  The  fatherless  boy  (and,  it 
should  be  added,  the  child  of  an  ignorant  father)  was 
given  no  instruction.  Later,  schools  were  erected  in 
Jerusalem.  But  these  were  inadequate.  The  fatherless 
were  still  left  without  teaching.  Thereupon  schools  were 
opened  in  the  largest  town  of  every  district,  to  which 
boys  of  sixteen  or  seventeen,  who  could  do  without  the 
care  of  their  parents,  were  sent.  But  it  was  soon,  ap- 
parent that  pedagogic  discipline  had  no  effect  upon  young 
men  who  had  entered  school  as  adolescents.  Then,  final- 
ly, schools  were  instituted  for  children,  of  six  or  seven." 

The  large,  bold  strokes  in  this  outline  sketch  of  the 
history  of  Jewish  education  mark  out  the  progress  made 
during  a  period  of  several  centuries,  roughly  speaking, 
from  the  time  of  the  Soferim  (ab.  400)  to  the  time  of 
the  Pharisees  (ab.  100).  It  is  a  highly  significant  fact 
that  the  man  who  deserves  the  title  "Father  of  the  Jewish 
School,"  was  a  great  leader  of  the  Pharisee  party,  Rabbi 
Simon  ben  Shatah  (ab.  70).  Of  the  results  achieved  by 
the  work  inaugurated  by  Rabbi  Simon,  we  can  gain  a 
good  idea  from  Josephus,  who  proudly  points  them  out 
to  the  Greeks  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  later.  "Our 
principal  care  of  all  is  this,"  he  says,  "to  educate  our 
children  well,"  .  .  .  "and  if  anybody  do  but  ask 


8,  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

any  one  of  them  (the  Jews)  about  our  laws,  he  will  more 
readily  tell  them  all  than  he  will  tell  his  own  name,  and 
this  is  in  consequence  of  our  having  learned  them  imme- 
diately, as  soon  as  ever  we  become  sensible  of  any  thing, 
and  of  our  having  them,  as  it  were,  engraven  on  our 
souls."  .  * 

It  cannot  be  denied,  the  relation  of  reality  to  rhetoric 
in  Josephus'  writings  is  about  the  same  as  in  a  modern 
sermon.  Yet,  after  his  statements  are  stripped  of  ex- 
aggerations, there  still  remains  a  residuum  of  facts  suffi- 
cient to  certify  to  the  important  place  assigned  to  ele- 
mentary education  in  his  day.  However,  we  must  not 
fail  to  take  into  account  that  Josephus  was  conversant 
chiefly  with  conditions  as  they  existed  among  the-  dwell- 
ers in  cities.  The  country  folk,  constituting  perHaps  the 
majority  of  the  Jewish  people  at  that  time,  were  still  de- 
barred from  the  blessings  of  an  education. 

The  catastrophes  that  overwhelmed  the  Je\yish  nation 
in  the  year  '70  and  in  the  year  133,  reducing 'flourishing 
cities  and  populous  villages  to  ruins,  gave  a^e^Sck  to 
the  cause  of  primary  schooling.  Accordingly,  irfthe  third 
century  of  the  common  era,  the  leading  intellects  among 
the  Jews  were  constrained  to  devote  their  attention  to  the 
rehabilitation  of  elementary  schools  and  teaching.  Po- 
litical and  economical  conditions  went  on  growing  worse 
for  the  Jews  in  Palestine.  In  spite  of  all  efforts  put  forth 
to  promote  and  develop  educational  work,  the  Holy  Land 
ceased  to  be  the  spiritual  centre  of  Judaism.  It  was  re- 
placed by  Babylonia.  There  the  work  had  to  be  started 
anew,  for  the  Jews  of  the  Persian  realm  occupied  a  very 
low  intellectual  plane,  and  generations  passed  by  until 
the  Palestinian  spirit  was  coaxed  to  take  root  and  flour- 
ish on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates.  And  yet,  compara- 
tively speaking,  it  cannot  be  said  that  a  long  time  elapsed 
before  a  Jewish  culture  had  established  itself  in  Baby- 
lonia. The  political  and  economical  conditions  of  the 
Jews  living  there  in  the  third  century  were  the  favoring 
circumstances.  Under  the  Sassanids  they  formed  an  all 
but  autonomous  body.  Influenced  by  great  intellectual 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  9 

leaders,  the  exilarchs  and  the  communal  authorities  fairly 
vied  with  each  other  in  fostering  and  promoting'  Jewish 
studies  and  culture.  Scholars  were  exempt  from  the 
poll  tax,  from  communal  tributes,  and  similar  imposts. 
They  were  permitted  to  settle  wheresoever  they  would, 
a  great  advantage  to  them  if  they  engaged  in  business  or 
trades,  which  as  a  rule  were  subjected  to  restrictions 
protecting  natives  against  a  much-feared  competition. 
Education  and  knowledge  in  the  course  of  time  became 
actual,  marketable  possessions,  instead  of  being,  as  at 
first,  ideal  acquisitions — the  best  standard  by  which  to 
measure  the  degree  of  idealism  prevailing  in  a  nation  at 
large.  Where  education  and  intellectual  attainments  are 
considered  a  material  asset,  idealism  must  be  the  attri- 
bute of  large  classes  of  the  people.  The  natural  features 
of  the  Babylonian  country  were  another  propitious  fac- 
tor. The  earth  there  yielded  its  products  without  de- 
manding more  than  a  minimum  of  human  labor.  The 
poorest  were  in  a  position  to  devote  several  hours  of  daily 
leisure  to  study,  and  without  a  'great  sacrifice  they  could 
forego  the  assistance  of  their  minor  children,  who  thus 
were  permitted  to  enjoy  a  schooling  of  many  years'  dura- 
tion. 

The  wide  spread  of  culture  among  the  Babylonian  Jews 
appears  strikingly  in  their  definition  of  the  Am  ha- 
Arez,  the  ignoramus.  They  applied  the  harsh  term  to 
one  who.  though  he  had  mastered  the  Bible  and  the  Mish- 
nah,  had  not  penetrated  more  profoundly  into  Jewish 
lore.  Contrast  this  with  what  the  Palestinians  called  an 
ignoramus,  and  the  vast  progress  made  in  two  centuries, 
more  or  less,  will  be  apparent.  To  the  Palestinian,  the 
man  who  could  not  recite  the  Shema  was  an  ignoramus ; 
one  who  knew  the  Bible,  let  alone  the  Mishnah,  was  a 
scholar ! 

In  spite  of  the  important  place  occupied  by  the  school 
in  the  intellectual  life  of  Babylonian  Jewry,  the  material 
dealing  with  educational  work  and  facilities  preserved 
in  the  Talmud  is  so  sparse  that  there  is  little  hope  of  our 
ever  being  able  to  reconstruct  the  educational  edifice  of 


IO  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

the  time  with  any  degree  of  completeness.  But  there  is 
more  than  enough  to  warrant  the  general  impression  that 
the  school  went  on  increasing  in  influence  under  the 
Babylonian  Jews,  and  the  later  development  of  the  Jew- 
ish educational  system  in  all  the  lands  of  the  Dispersion 
is  directly  traceable  to  these  vigorous  Babylonian  begin- 
nings. 

Unfortunately,  the  Talmudic  time  is  not  the  only 
period  in  Jewish  educational  history  of  which  we  are  ig- 
norant. We  are  equally  little  in  a  position  to  attempt  a 
presentation  of  pedagogic  conditions  among  the  Jews  in 
a  time  much  nearer  our  own,  in  the  Middle  Ages.  At 
most  we  might  venture  to  deal  with  the  higher  institu- 
tions of  learning.  For  the  primary  schools  our  informa- 
tion is  too  meagre  by  far.  Our  reports  become  full  and 
detailed  enough  to  justify  an  attempt  at  description  only 
when  we  reach  the  elementary  school  of  the  so-called 
Polish  Jews,  which  is  an  accurate  designation,  provided 
we  bear  in  mind  that  Polish  is  here  used  as  a  generic  term 
for  Eastern  Europe  so  far  as  Jews  are  concerned.  We 
must,  therefore,  limit  ourselves  to  glimpses  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  life  nursed  and  developed  in  the  ele- 
mentary schools  of  the  Polish  Jews. 

Jews  had  been  living  in  Poland  for  centuries  before 
anything  was  heard  of  them,  certainly  nothing  was  heard 
about  their  intellectual  life.  The  persecutions  that  ex- 
tended in  unbroken  sequence  from  the  First  Crusade  to 
the  Age  of  the  Reformation  cast  large  numbers  of  German 
Jews  into  Poland,  whither  they  carried  their  Talmudic 
learning  and  their  German  religiousness,  for  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  there  was  a  time  when  the  German 
Jews  excelled  all  others  in  Jewish  exclusiveness  and  rig- 
orous piety.  That  was  the  time  in  which  they  had  not 
yet  become  acquainted  with  the  mission  of  Israel,  of 
which  the  essence  seems  to  be  that  the  Jews  of  one  land 
permit  themselves  to  be  done  to  death  in  order  that  their 
brethren  elsewhere  may  be  kept  supplied  with  oratorical 
munition  and  clap-trap.  Hence  the  long-enduring  march 
to  the  East  of  Europe,  especially  to  Poland,  the  country 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  II 

which,  according  to  a  well-known  Latin  saying,  is  "the 
heaven  of  the  nobleman,  the  purgatory  of  the  citizen, 
the  hell  of  the  peasant,  and  the  paradise  of  the  Jew" — 
such  a  paradise  as  the  Christian  love  of  those  days  was 
likely  to  concede  to  him.  We  may  be  sure  that  the  nar- 
row-minded town  guilds  and  the  fanatical  clergy  took 
care  not  to  rob  the  Jew  of  his  hope  for  a  real  Paradise. 
The  economic  conditions  were  far  from  brilliant  even  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  when  Polish  Jewish  prosperity 
was  at  its  height.  In  the  middle  of  that  century,  Rabbi 
Moses  Isserles  wrote  to  a  friend  in  Germany:  "Thou 
hadst  been  better  off  in  Poland,  if  only  on  dry  bread,  but 
that  at  least  without  anxiety  of  mind."  Rich  Jews,  like 
Simon  Guenzburg  in  Germany,  for  instance,  there  were 
none  in  Poland.  But  that  is  not  altogether  regrettable. 
The  salvation  of  the  Jews  was  never  wrought  by  the 
rich  among  them.  What  gave  Poland  its  pre-eminence 
was  the  circumstance  that  it  offered  means  of  subsist- 
ence, however  wretched,  to  the  middle  class,  by  permit- 
ting the  Jews  to  enter  all  branches  of  business,  while  in 
the  rest  of  Europe  they  were  confined  to  petty  trading 
and  money-lending. 

Such  economic  conditions  sufficed  to  give  an  impetus 
toward  a  new  Jewish  culture,  and  with  an  external  im- 
pulse superadded  it  resulted  in  an  irresistible  movement. 
The  outer  force  that  came  to  aid  the  inner  was  the  in- 
vention of  printing,  which  made  knowledge  a  common 
possession  of  the  people.  The  first  notable  Jewish  schol- 
ars in  Poland  of  whom  we  hear,  lived  and  worked  at 
the  turn  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Scarcely  a  genera- 
tion after  the  pioneers,  the  Jews  of  Poland  had  leapt  into 
the  forefront  of  Jewish  learning,  a  sovereign  position 
from  which  they  have  not  yet  been  dislodged.  The  sig- 
nificant fact  is  that  the  publication  of  the  first  editions  of 
the  two  Talmudim  and  of  other  classical  works  of  Jewish 
literature  fell  in  the  interval  that  elapsed  between  the 
time  when  Poland  had  but  one  scholar  of  eminence,  Rab- 
bi Jacob  Pollak,  and  the  time  when  it  produced  Rabbi 
Solomon  Loria,  the  most  eminent  Talmudist  of  his  day. 


12  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  development  of  the  higher  edu- 
cation went  the  education  of  the  Jewish  child,  which  be- 
gan at  home  before  he  was  sent  to  school,  quite  in  agree- 
ment with  the  principle  of  the  greatest  educator  of  mod- 
ern times,  who  holds  that  education  is  the  concern  of 
the  family ;  from  the  family  it  proceeds,  and  to  the  fam- 
ily for  the  most  part  it  returns.  Of  Jewish  pedagogy  the 
characteristic  feature  was  that  the  three  chief  ends  of 
education  were  subserved  as  a  unity  at  one  and  the  same 
time.  The  earliest  instruction  kept  in  view  at  once  the 
intellectual,  the  moral,  and  the  religious  training  of  the 
child.  As  soon  as  he  was  able  to  speak,  he  was  taught 
Hebrew  words  and  sentences,  bringing  into  play  his 
memory  and  his  perceptive  faculties,  and  the  sentences 
were  always  of  religious  bearing.  They  were  mainly 
Berakot,  blessings,  especially  those  that  form  part  of 
the  morning  and  evening  prayers  and  of  the  grace  after 
meals.  "Blessed  be  the  All-Merciful,  the  Lord  of  bread, 
who  giveth  food  to  all  beings,"  is  today,  as  it  was  four 
hundred  years  ago,  the  form  of  grace  used  by  the  Jewish 
children  in  Poland.  The  morning  devotion  consisted  of 
two  Biblical  verses:  "Hear,  O  Israel,  the  Lord  is  our 
God,  the  Lord  is  One,"  and  "Moses  commanded  us  the 
Torah  as  the  inheritance  of  the  congregation  of  Jacob" 
(Deut.  33,  4),  to  which  the  rhymed  couplet  was 
added :  "To  the  Torah  I  shall  ever  faithful  be,  For  this 
may  God  Almighty  grant  His  help  to  me."  Before  bed- 
time, the  verse  from  Psalm  31  was  said:  "Into  Thine 
hand  I  commend  my  spirit;  Thou  hast  redeemed  me,  O 
Lord,  Thou  God  of  Truth." 

A  child  of  three  or  four  years  cannot  be  expected  to 
understand  the  import  of  prayers,  even  when  couched  in 
the  vernacular.  Religious  feeling  comes  into  play  much 
later  in  life.  It  was  an  advantage  from  this  point  of  view 
that  the  prayers  were  put  into  Hebrew,  a  language  re- 
moved from  daily  concerns.  In  this  somewhat  strange 
guise  they  appeal  to  the  intellect  of  the  child  as  well  as 
to  his  fancy.  The  alien  garb  makes  them  sink  into  the 
child-mind  as  a  concrete,  almost  tangible  entity,  a  vessel 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  13 

to  be  kept  hold  of  until  the  proper  content  comes  to 
hand  to  be  poured  into  it.  The  language  of  familiar  in- 
tercourse is  too  fluid  to  fulfill  this  pedagogic  purpose. 
For  the  same  reason  Hebrew  was  used  for  the  civil 
speeches  of  polite  society  first  impressed  upon  a  child. 
Berukim  ha-Yoshebim,  "Blessed  ye  who  are  present 
•here,"  was  the  greeting  extended  by  a  child  entering  a 
room  in  which  the  company  was  seated  at  the  table,  and 
on  leaving  he  was  expected  to  say,  Bireshutekem,  "with 
your  permission." 

The  ceremonials  of  the  Jewish  religion  early  caught 
the  fancy  of  the  impressionable  child,  and  kept  him  fas- 
cinated. Having  outgrown  his  baby  clothes,  the  little 
fellow  was  given  the  "prayer-square,"  the  Arba-Kanfot, 
as  part  of  his  first  boy's  suit.  With  two  such  tangible 
reminders  he  was  in  no  danger  of  forgetting  his  double 
dignity  as  a  lord  of  creation  and  a  son  of  the  chosen  peo- 
ple. "Shaking"  the  Lulab  on  Sukkot,  waving  little 
flags  on  Simhat  Torah,  filching  the  Afikomen  from  the 
Seder  table,  and,  last  but  not  least,  the  consumption  of 
delicate  butter  cookies  on  Shabuot — these  and  many 
other  of  the  lighter  ceremonial  acts  and  customs  prepared 
the  child  admirably  for  the  more  serious  instruction  in 
the  Heder,  which  wras  begun  when  he  was  five  years  old. 

The  Heder!  In  the  face  of  the  misunderstanding  to 
which  friend  and  foe  alike  have  treated  it  in  modern 
times,  it  is  difficult  to  speak  calmly  of  this,  the  greatest 
institution  of  post-Biblical  Judaism.  Surely  a  defense  is 
out  of  place  when  applied  to  a  system  still  in  use  now, 
though  its  beginnings  lose  themselves  in  the  obscurity 
of  the  days  when  Rome  was  a  tiny  Italian  republic  and 
Athens  unknown  as  an  intellectual  centre.  It  is  obvious 
that  a  creation  of  the  epoch  of  the  Scribes  in  Pales- 
tine could  not  persist  unchanged  in  Spain  in  the  hey- 
day of  Greek-Arabic  culture,  and  to  expect  the  New 
York  of  the  twentieth  century  to  accept,  .root  and 
branch,  the  Lublin  Heder  of  the  sixteenth,  would 
be  as  irrational  as  to  judge  the  Polish  Heder  at  its  best 
by  the  form  and  constitution  it  has  adopted  in  our  day. 


14  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

Evolution  is  not  the  only  factor  that  enters  into  an  es- 
timate of  historical  development.  Degeneration  is  an 
equally  important  aspect,  especially  with  a  people  like  the 
Jews,  whose  fortunes  have  often  been  forced  into  unnat- 
ural channels  by  the  violent  hands  of  unsympathetic  out- 
siders. 

The  Heder  in  Poland  at  the  period  in  which  Jewish 
culture  was  at  its  height  was  neither  a  public  nor  a  pri- 
vate school.  It  was  an  institution  supervised  by  the 
communal  authorities,  but  managed  in  detail  by  private 
individuals.  The  choice  of  the  teacher  lay  with  the 
parents,  and  the  teacher  was  at  liberty  to  accept  and  re- 
ject pupils  as  he  saw  fit,  but  the  community  reserved  the 
right  to  pass  upon  the  number  of  pupils,  the  curriculum, 
the  schedule,  and  other  particulars  regarding  the  plan  of 
instruction.  The  school  regulations  in  force  in  the  Jew- 
ish community  of  Cracow  in  1551,  the  oldest  of  their 
kind  known,  contain  various  points  of  interest.  A  teach- 
er of  elementary  pupils  was  not  permitted  to  have  more 
than  forty  children  in  his  class,  and  a  teacher  of  Tal- 
mud not  more  than  twenty,  and  for  these  numbers  each 
of  them  was  required  to  employ  two  assistants. 

A  generation  later,  the  same  community  adopted  rules 
fixing  the  salary  of  the  teachers,  because,  it  is  said, 
"their  demands  are  so  exorbitant  that  many  are  not  able 
to  satisfy  them."  fTo  understand  this,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  though  the  community  maintained  a  free 
school,  the  Talmud  Torah,  parents  availed  themselves  of 
it  only  in  extreme  cases  of  poverty.  "Though  you  have 
to  secure  the  means  by  begging,  be  sure  to  provide  for 
the  instruction  of  your  sons  and  daughters  in  the  Torah," 
is  a  dying  father's  admonition  to  his  children  in  his  last 
will  and  testament  dated  1357.  The  poorest  of  the  poor 
sent  their  children  to  the  free  Talmud  Torah ;  the  merely 
poor  denied  themselves  food  and  raiment,  and  paid  for 
the  schooling  of  their  boys  and  girls.  This  explains 
why  communal  ordinances  as  well  as  decisions  by  emi- 
nent rabbis  concern  themselves  with  the  times  when  tu- 
ition fees  fell  due.  Rabbi  Solomon  Loria  decides  that 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  15 

half  the  stipulated  remuneration  must  be  paid  the  teach- 
er in  advance,  to  enable  him  to  maintain  his  establishment 
decently.  In  spite  of  the  authority  of  Loria,  his  view  does 
not  seem  to  have  prevailed,  for  the  teachers,  it  appears, 
were  paid  at  the  end  of  the  month.  By  this  arrangement 
the  New  Moon  Day  was  a  holiday,  not  only  for  the  pu- 
pils, who  were  not  required  to  return  to  the  Heder  for 
the  afternoon  session,  but  also  for  the  teachers,  who,  in 
addition  to  their  salaries,  would  sometimes  receive  "Rosh 
Hodesh  money,"  a  small  free-will  offering,  from  their 
patrons.  To  prevent  sordid  competition  among  teach- 
ers, which  might  have  left  some  of  them  without  school 
and  pupils  at  the  end  of  a  month,  it  was  strictly  pro- 
hibited to  change  teachers  during  the  term,  and  teachers, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  not  permitted  to  go  about  seek- 
ing patronage  between  terms.  Parents  were  expected  to 
decide  upon  their  future  action  regarding  the  placing 
of  their  children  uninfluenced  by  those  financially  inter- 
ested in  their  decision. 

Hebrew  reading  was  the  earliest  subject  in  the  Heder 
course  of  study.  The  alphabet  was  put  on  large  charts, 
first  in  the  usual  order,  from  Alef  to  Taw,  and  again  in 
the  reverse  order,  from  Taw  to  Alef;  then  with  vowels 
and  again  without  vowels.  The  charts  contained  also  a 
few  Bible  verses.  To  enliven  the  drudgery  of  alphabet 
learning,  the  children  were  taught  not  merely  the  names 
of  the  letters,  but  also  the  meaning  of  the  names,  of  their 
form,  and  their  position,  a  method  not  unlike  that  of 
the  modern  picture  book.  This  practical  way  of  teach- 
ing appealed  both  to  the  fancy  and  the  intellect.  Alef- 
Bet — the  child  was  told — means  "learn  wisdom ;"  Gimel- 
Dalet,  "be  merciful  to  the  poor,"  etc.  Thus  the  stiff 
array  of  letters  was  changed  into  the  signs  of  life.  Oth- 
er modern  systems  are  represented,  too.  "Tell  the  child," 
says  an  author  of  the  sixteenth  century,  "that  the  Bet 
has  its  mouth  open,  and  the  Pe  has  its  mouth  closed." 
The  pedagogue  thus  conveyed  to  the  learner  not  only  the 
difference  in  the  appearance  of  these  two  letters,  but  also 
the  difference  in  the  position  of  the  lips  in  pronouncing 


l6  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

them,  and  to  this  day  the  Kamez,  the  long1  o,  is  described 
in  the  Heder  as  the  Patah  with  a  beard. 

The  next  step  was  to  the  prayer-book,  which  became 
the  text-book  for  reading-  as  soon  as  the  boy  was  able  to 
put  letters  together  into  words.  As  it  was  a  cherished 
purpose  to  have  the  child  say  the  p/rayers  by  himself  as 
soon  as  possible,  no  attention  was  paid  to  their  meaning, 
until  he  could  read  them  fluently,  on  the  principle  that 
a  child  was  first  to  be  religiously  active,  and  religious 
thinking  would  follow  as  his  intelligence  developed  with 
years.  Moreover,  the  prayers  not  being  composed  in  the 
classical  Hebrew,  it  was  thought  advisable  to  defer  effec- 
tive instruction  in  the  Hebrew  language  until  the  study 
of  the  Bible  could  be  begun.  The  third  Book  of  Moses 
was  chosen  as  the  first  subject  of  instruction  in  the  Bible 
— the  principle  here  being,  the  law  of  Israel  before  the 
history  of  Israel.  After  a  part  of  Leviticus  had  been 
taken,  the  instructor  devoted  himself  to  teaching  as  much 
of  each  week's  Pentateuch  portion  as  the  pupil's  time  and 
capacity  permitted.  The  disadvantage  of  this  practice 
was,  that  the  beginner,  unable  to  manage  the  whole  por- 
tion, acquired  the  Pentateuch  in  fragments.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  must  be  remembered  that  to  teach  He- 
brew grammar  was  at  this  stage  as  little  the  intention 
as  to  convey  the  historical  content  of  the  Scriptures  or 
their  theological  interpretation.  The  aim  for  the  mo- 
ment was  to  enable  the  learner  to  acquire  an  extensive 
Hebrew  vocabulary.  With  only  this  in  view,  it  was  not 
long  before  a  boy  of  even  average  ability  could  easily  be 
made  to  go  through  the  week's  portion  in  season. 

A  clear  notion  of  the  methods  of  Bible  instruction  in 
vogue  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  may  be 
gained  from  two  works  entitled,  Baer  (or  Beer)  Mosheh, 
and  Lekah  Tob,  written  by  a  Rabbi  Moses  Saertels,  and 
printed  at  Prague  in  1604-5.  The  author  himself  tells  us 
that  it  was  his  purpose  to  perpetuate  in  print  the  tra- 
ditional translation  and  explanation  of  the  Bible.  This 
being  the  case,  it  does  not  astonish  us  to  find  the  regula- 
tions of  the  Jewish  community  of  Cracow  making  it  ob- 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  \"J 

ligatory  upon  teachers  to  use  Rabbi  Moses  Saertels' 
books.  From  a  comparison  with  the  Bible  Commentary 
by  Rashi  it  appears  that  they  depend  upon  it  throughout. 
Virtually  they  are  an  introduction  to  Rashi,  whose  Com- 
mentary was  the  text-book  given  to  the  pupil  after  he  had 
mastered  a  part  of  the  Bible. 

Another  subject  in  the  primary  classes  of  the  Heder 
was  writing,  both  the  square  characters  and  the  script, 
the  latter,  the  so-called  Juedisch-Deutsch,  used  in  cor- 
respondence. If  we  mention,  besides,  arithmetic  from 
addition  to  division,  and  the  outlines  of  Hebrew  ety- 
mology, we  have  exhausted  the  curriculum  of  the  primary 
Heder,  or,  as  the  Jewish  expression  goes,  the  work  of 
the.Melamed  Dardake,  the  primary  teacher. 

At  the  age  of  about  ten  the  boy  passed  from  the  primary 
Heder  to  its  higher  division,  the  Talmud  Heder,  in 
which  all  subjects  of  study  gave  way  to  the  Talmud,  and 
henceforth  he  devoted  himself  to  it  exclusively.  The 
Melamed  Dardake  surrendered  him  to  the  Talmud 
ceacher,  and  in  his  charge  he  remained  until  he  was  able 
to  enter  the  Yeshibah,  the  Talmudic  high  school. 

A  latter-day  description  of  Talmudical  studies  in  a 
Polish  Heder  is  not  unlike  the  sensations  a  hungry  man 
experiences  while  reading  the  menu  of  a  French  chef. 
Of  what  avail  the  fine  names  without  the  substantial 
products  of  his  art?  Shibboleths  like  Pilpul,  dialectics, 
sophistry,  beg  the  question.  They  are  weak  characteri- 
zations of  an  intellectual  tendency  that  moulded  the 
greatest  Talmudists  of  the  last  four  hundred  years. 
Modern  historians  are  lavish  of  praise  for  the  well-or- 
dered studies  of  the  Sefardim,  and  equally  lavish  of 
censure  for  the  topsy-turvy  methods  of  the  Polish 
Heder,  which  embarked  a  ten-year-old  lad  on  the 
"sea  of  the  Talmud."  In  view  of  this  attitude,  is 
it  not  rather  startling  to  find  that  since  the  time 
of  Rabbi  Joseph  Caro  (d.  1575)  the  Sefardim  cannot 
show  a  single  name  in  the  realm  of  the  Talmud  com- 
parable with  the  distinguished  scholars  of  Poland? 
Would  it  not  seem  that  after  all  there  must  have  been 


l8  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

method  in  the  methodlessness  of  the  Polish  Jew?  The 
principle  underlying  the  study  of  the  Talmud  in  Poland 
was  "non  multa  sed  multum,"  not  number,  but  quality. 
Whatever  was  studied,  was  searched  out  in  every  detail, 
while  with  the  Sefardim  the  thing  that  signified  was  the 
extent  of  the  field  covered.  For  the  Sefardim  learning 
was  a  matter  of  sentiment,  for  the  Polish  Jew  it  was  an 
intellectual  occupation.  The  former  studied  in  order  to 
know  how  the  law  would  have  them  act  in  given  practical 
cases ;  the  latter  in  order  to  analyze  the  theory  on  which 
the  practice  was  based.  The  Sefardic  student  aimed  to 
become  a  Rabbi  who  would  have  to  decide  questions  of 
law  and  custom ;  the  Ashkenazic  student,  to  become  a 
Lamdan  able  to  control  the  decisions  of  his  rtabbi  and, 
in,  case  of  necessity,  show  up  their  falsity.  The  protest 
made  by  a  number  of  prominent  Polish  scholars  of 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  against  the 
dominant  practice  in  the  study  of  the  Talmud,  was  justi- 
fied from  the  point  of  view  of  sentiment  The  dialectic 
method  gradually  secularized  Jewish  religious  knowledge. 
But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  the  Lamdan  educated  in  the 
Heder  does  not  represent  the  class  of  the  pious ;  he  is 
the  type  of  the  educated  Jew,  and  the  decried  method 
was  the  only  one  calculated  to  produce  this  type.  It  is 
unfair  to  think  of  the  Heder  as  a  religious  school,  as  it 
is  generally  assumed  to  be.  It  was  more,  it  was  the  in- 
stitution for  general  Jewish  education. 

Errors  are  transmitted  like  diseases.  The  inaccurate 
rendering  of  the  Hebrew  word  "Torah"  by  "law,"  for 
which  we  are  indebted  to  our  Greek-speaking  writers,  has 
all  along  been  a  barrier  in  the  way  of  the  Christian  theo- 
logian. It  has  prevented  him  effectually  from  under- 
standing the  system  of  rabbinism  as  a  whole,  but  espe- 
cially from  understanding  the  specific  ideal  of  rabbinism 
which  is  summed  up  in  the  term  Talmud  Torah,  the 
study  of  the  Torah.  The  most  deplorable  aspect  of  this 
lack  of  comprehension  is  that  it  has  not  remained  without 
effect  upon  the  Jews  themselves,  at  least  so  far  as  the 
'development  of  post-Talmudic  Judaism  is  concerned. 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  19 

Torah  is  not  law.  It  is  an  expression  for  the  aggregate 
of  Jewish  teachings.  It  comprises  every  field  and  mark 
of  culture — morality,  justice,  society,  education,  etc.  The 
term  aims  to  gather  them  all  up  as  a  unit,  because  the 
Jewish  view  is  that  all  the  nobler  manifestations  of  hu- 
man conduct  must  be  iConnected  with  religion.  IThe 
education  of  the  Jewish  child,  beginning  with  the  Soferim 
down  to  our  own  day,  has  been  exclusively  Jewish, 
though  not  exclusively  religious,  certainly  not  exclusive- 
ly legalistic.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  the  education 
of  the  Ashkenazic  child  was  more  secular  than  the  edu- 
cation of  the  Sefardic  child.  The  Jewish  school  of  the 
Sefardim  had  a  more  strongly  religious  character  than 
that  of  the  Ashkenazim,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
Sefardic  child  was  taught  non-Jewish  branches  of  knowl- 
edge. Externals  do  not  count.  Nine  hundred  years 
ago,  non- Jewish  children  sat  on  the  same  benches  with 
Jewish  children  in  a  synagogue  used  for  school  pur- 
poses. That  was  among  Sefardim.  Nothing  like  it  is 
thinkable  among  the  Ashkenazim,  because  their  educa- 
tional system  was  laid  out  on  Jewish  lines  entirely.  Non- 
Jewish  knowledge  was  rarely  cultivated  by  them.  The 
very  fact  that  the  Sefardim  were  often  adepts  in  phil- 
osophy and  the  natural  sciences,  produced  the  result  that 
Jewish  studies  among  them  gradually  stiffened  into  a  re- 
ligious exercise.  They  cultivated  them  to  satisfy  their 
heart  cravings.  For  the  Sefardic  intellect  there  were 
other  than  Jewish  sources  of  gratification.  With  the  Ash- 
kenazim, Jewish  studies  offered  the  sole  and  only  field 
for  the  manifestation  of  their  mental  activity.  As  a 
consequence,  even  their  religious  literature  was  cultivated 
for  educational  and  intellectual  purposes.  At  the  end  of 
about  five  centuries  of  parallel  development,  the  two 
tendencies  culminated  in  the  sixteenth  century,  the  one 
in  the  Kabbalah  of  the  Orientals,  the  other  in  the  Pilpul 
of  the  Jews'  of  Poland.  The  process  that  took  place  was 
this:  When  the  Sefardim  were  expelled  from  Spain  and 
came  to  countries  in  which  culture  and  science  were  at 
a  low  ebb,  their  intellect  had  no  support ;  they  had  to  fall 


2O  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

back  upon  their  Jewish  feeling,  and  so  they  lost  them- 
selves in  mysticism.  In  Poland,  again,  where  the  Jews 
likewise  came  in  contact  with  a  low  stage  of  cultural  de- 
velopment, that  intellectual  attitude  asserted  itself  in  them 
which  in  the  twelfth  century  had  brought  forth  the  school 
of  the  Tossafists  in  France.  Critics  like  Rabbi  Solomon 
Loria  and  Rabbi  Joel  Sirkes  in  Poland  may  fitly  be  men- 
tioned in  the  same  breath  with  Rabbi  Jacob  Tarn  and 
Rabbi  Isaac  ben  Samuel  in  France.  The  Pllpul,  so  far 
from  being  the  result  of  a  process  of  deterioration,  is  in 
reality  nothing  but  the  inevitable  issue  from  the  intellec- 
tual movement  inaugurated  by  the  Soferim.  From  the 
first  the  school  was  raised  on  a  national  basis,  the  only 
firm  foundation  for  the  education  of  the  young,  and  as 
religion  occupies  the  most  prominent  place  in  the  national 
life  of  the  Jews,  the  Jewish  school  was  a  religious  in- 
stitution as  well.  So  long  as  the  Jews  lived  in  their  own 
land,  and  could  develop  their  national  life  without  let  or 
hindrance,  there  was  no  objection  to  introducing  ele- 
ments of  alien  origin  into  the  school.  It  had  no  diffi- 
culty in  transforming  them  Jewishly  and  assimilating 
them. 

But  when  a  national  life  was  precluded,  the  Jew- 
ish school  perforce  had  to  narrow  its  compass.  This 
was  the  only  escape  from  the  dangers  of  absorption  by 
the  surrounding  cultures  which  menaced  Jewish  intel- 
lectual life.  But  even  after  its  aims  suffered  such  con- 
traction, the  Jewish  school  did  not  fail  to  reveal  the  in- 
tellectual impulse  as  the  mainspring  of  the  education  it 
afforded.  In  spite  of  its  one-sidedness  in  excluding 
everything  non-Jewish,  therefore,  the  Heder  did  not 
cease  to  be  the  great  national  institution  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Jewish  intellect. 

To  return  to  the  Heder  itself,  different  as  the  course 
of  studies  and  the  method  of  teaching  are  in  the  Heder 
from  those  in  the  modern  school,  the  two  institutions  de- 
part still  further  from  each  other  in  the  life  their  respec- 
tive pupils  led  and  still  lead.  Life  in  the  Heder  was  ar- 
ranged with  more  than  due  regard  for  individuality.  Not 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  21 

only  was  the  Heder,  as  we  have  seen,  a  private  institution 
in  which  the  parents  were  given  the  opportunity  of 
choosing  the  teacher  with  a  view  to  their  children's  needs 
and  gifts,  but  also  the  teaching  was  personal  in  character. 
Restricted  as  the  number  of  pupils  was,  they  were  still 
divided  into  Kitot,  sections.  The  teacher  usually  occu- 
pied himself  with  no  more  than  four  children  at  a  time. 
In  this  way  a  close  personal  relation  could  grow  up  be- 
tween master  and  pupil.  It  was  practically  impossible  to 
deceive  a  teacher  by  palming  off  work  on  him  done  by 
others  at  home.  Instruction,  especially  in  the  Talmud, 
was  discursive,  and  the  cadence,  or,  better,  the  sing-song, 
of  a  Talmudic  sentence  sufficed  to  indicate  whether  or 
not  the  little  Talmudist  understood  it.  The  result  was 
that  in  many  cases  the  teacher  came  to  take  a  vital  per- 
sonal interest  in  the  pupils.  AVith  pleasure  and  pride 
he  would  observe  the  progress  of  his  boys,  and  no  great- 
er joy  could  come  to  him  than  to  be  caught  nap- 
ping by  one  of  them  who  urged  a  difficult  objection  to 
some  Talmudic  statement,  which  the  teacher  was  not 
prepared  to  refute  on  the  spot.  As  the  whole  system 
purposed  the  training  of  the  intellect,  a  "good  scholar" 
in  the  Heder  meant  only  a  mentally  well-endowed  pupil. 
Qualities  other  than  intellectual  did  not  count.  "A  mis- 
chievous boy  has  a  good  head"  is  the  Jewish  way  of 
saying  that  a  bright  boy  is  privileged  to  indulge  in 
pranks  in  the  Heder. 

As  a  rule  the  teachers  were  mild  enough  in  meting  out 
punishment.  Some  of  their  gentleness  may  perhaps  be 
set  to  the  account  of  self-interest.  They  may  have  feared 
to  lose  paying  pupils  through  overgreat  severity.  One 
of  the  teachers  describes  the  dilemma  in  which  he  and 
his  confreres  were  often  placed,  in  the  following  graphic 
words:  "When  a  teacher  nogs  one  of  his  pupils,  he 
bursts  into  tears,  goes  home  to  his  father,  and  complains 
tearfully.  The  father  gets  angry,  and  the  boy  is  encour- 
aged to  complain  to  his  mother,  too.  She,  in  her  affec- 
tion for  her  son,  incites  the  father  against  the  teacher, 
who,  she  says,  has  come  within  an  ace  of  killing  the  boy, 


22  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

and  she  calls  him  a  fool.  Naturally,  the  father  is  wrought 
up  against  the  teacher,  and  seeks  to  engage  him  in  a 
quarrel,  etc.,  etc." 

We  may  be  quite  sure  that  the  Melamed  was  not  the 
brute  pictured  by  the  morbid  imagination  of  certain  Mas- 
kilim,  whose  animus  against  the  Heder  is  probably  to  be 
sought  in  a  hatred  of  the  deeply  Jewish  atmosphere  that 
prevailed  there,  and  prevailed  in  spite  of  the  lack  of  ex- 
plicit religious  instruction  in  the  modern  sense.  The 
Heder  would  have  refused  to  tolerate  long-winded 
definitions  of  the  being  and  existence  of  God,  and  the 
little  Talmud  pupil  would  not  have  suppressed  his  whence 
and  his  what,  his  Mino  hane  MilU  and  his  Mai  ko  mash- 
ma  Ian.  The  Jewish  martyrs  and  saints  were  not  raised 
in  the  hot-house  atmosphere  of  religion  spread  by  the 
catechism,  and  it  is  hardly  an  accident  that  the  desire 
for  religious  text-books  did  not  manifest  itself  until  Ju- 
daism was  being  forced  into  the  four  walls  of  the  syna- 
gogue. Previous  to  that  time  Jewish  literature,  rich  as 
it  was,  had  no  such  book  to  show,  except  a  single  one, 
the  author  of  which  became  a  convert  to  Christianity  af- 
ter writing  it.  The  Jewish  religion  is  not  a  religious 
arithmetic.  It  does  not  permit  the  idea  to  usurp  the 
place  of  the  spirit.  From  the  first,  the  Jew  has  felt  that 
reality  is  not  abstract,  but  individual.  Religion  to  be  a 
vital  influence  must  be  lived,  not  taught,  and  this  con- 
dition was  fulfilled  in  the  Heder.  The  whole  life  there 
was  religiously  Jewish,  for  though  the  Jewish  school 
aimed  first  and  foremost  to  cultivate  the  mind,  the  other 
point  of  view  was  never  lost  sight  of,  that  "the  fear  of 
God  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom"  (Prov.,  1,  7).  The 
teachings  of  the  Prophets  and  the  lives  of  the  sages  were 
not  abstractions  to  the  Heder  boys,  but  flesh  and  bone 
realities.  Rabbi  Akiba's  persistence,  through  which  the 
water  carrier  became  the  most  celebrated  scholar  of  his 
day,  his  devotion  to  his  wife  Rachel,  and  his  martyr 
death,  were  not  incidents  in  the  biography  of  a  hero  dead 
fifteen  hundred  years.  They  formed  the  history  of  an 
old  and  tried  friend  whose  acts  and  opinions  left  an  in- 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  23 

delible  impression  upon  the  child's  mind.  The  Melamed, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  not  a  critical  historian.  He  did 
not  differentiate  history  from  fable.  The  gnat  that  was 
said  to  have  gnawed  the  brain  of  Titns  was  as  historical  to 
him  as  the  destruction  of  the  Temple  by  the  same  Titus. 
And  yet  he  did  more  for  the  preservation  of  Jewish  na- 
tionalism than  all  the  well-turned  phrases  of  the  tribe  of 
modern  orators,  when  on  the  day  preceding  Tishah  be- 
Ab,  in  a  voice  choked  with  tears,  he  read  the  Hurban  to 
his  pupils,  the  Talmudic  narrative  recounting  the  details 
of  the  catastrophe  that  overtook  Israel  in  the  year  '70, 
and  again  in  133.  It  was  reserved  for  a  system  of  edu- 
cation planned  on  scientific,  historical  lines  to  produce 
Jews  who  believe,  or  desire  others  to  believe,  that  the 
day  commemorating  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  ought 
to  be  celebrated  as  a  feast  day,  for  the  alleged  reason 
that  it  was  the  event  enabling  the  Jew  to  go  forth  and 
proclaim  his  mission  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  the 
world.  Many  a  graduate  of  the  Heder  has  become  an 
apostate,  but  never  has  it  been  guilty  of  producing  hybrid 
Jews  who  feign  a  desire  to  Judaize  the  world  while  they 
are  in  reality  de-Judaizing  the  Jews. 

As  history  was  disregarded  in  the  Heder,  so  ethics  as 
such  did  not  appear  in  the  curriculum.  There  was  no 
need  to  give  moral  instruction  directly.  The  study  of  the 
Talmud  and  of  rabbinical  literature  took  the  place  of  the 
best  conceivable  manual  of  ethics.  It  compelled  the  stu- 
tient  to  think  profoundly  and  assimilate  actively  what 
suited  the  needs  of  his  nature  in  the  ample  wealth  of 
moral  teachings  scattered  throughout  this  literature.  The 
pupil  was  not  called  upon  to  compose  his  face  solemnly 
while  moral  exhortations  were  poured  down  upon  his  de- 
voted head.  In  the  regular  course  of  studies  prescribed, 
the  Talmud  offered  him  ethical  observations  of  funda- 
mental importance,  while  ostensibly  propounding  an  intri- 
cate judicial  question  which  requires  fine  dialectical 
reasoning.  The  transition  from  the  legal  element  to 
the  ethical  is  almost  imperceptible ;  sometimes  the  inter- 
relation between  them  is  so  close  that  the  dividing  line 


24  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

cannot  be  discerned.  Accordingly,  the  intellectual  in- 
terest of  the  student  was  not  interrupted.  "Let  thy  yea 
be  yea,  and  thy  nay,  nay,"  for  instance,  is  the  last  link 
in  a  long  chain  of  complicated  discussions  on  the  legal 
character  of  a  deposit,  and  the  conclusion  meant  nothing 
to  the  student  who  had  not  followed  the  devious  reason- 
ing understandingly  and  constructively. 

Nor  was  the  imagination  of  the  child  left  to  starve. 
How  could  it,  with  the  numberless  stories  the  Talmud 
contains  about  the  life  and  deeds  of  the  great  in  Israel ! 
Take,  for  example,  the  very  sentence  just  quoted:  "Let 
thy  yea  be  yea,  and  thy  nay,  nay."  As  an  illustration  of 
it,  we  are  told  concerning  Rabbi  Safra  that  he  was  nego- 
tiating a  sale.  The  would-be  purchaser  happened  to  ap- 
proach Rabbi  Safra  and  speak  to  him  about  the  transac- 
tion at  the  very  moment  when  the  rabbi  was  engaged  in 
reciting  the  Shema.  Not  noticing  that  the  rabbi  was 
praying,  he  made  him  an  offer.  Rabbi  Safra  naturally 
would  not  interrupt  his  prayer.  With  a  gesture  he  tried 
to  convey  to  the  purchaser  that  he  did  not  wish  to  be  dis- 
turbed. Misunderstanding  the  import  of  the  gesture,  he 
offered  a  higher  price.  At  the  end  of  his  devotions  Rabbi 
Safra  accepted  the  first  price.  He  would  not  profit  by 
the  other's  mistake,  for  he  had  silently  given  his  assent 
to  the  lower  sum. 

Again,  could  there  be  a  more  impressive  way  of  teach- 
ing children  the  Jewish  view  of  the  treatment  of  animals 
than  through  the  suffering  of  the  Patriarch  Rabbi  Judah, 
the  compiler  of  the  Mishnah?  A  calf,  the  Talmud  tells 
us,  about  to  be  led  to  the  shambles  took  refuge  with 
Rabbi  Judah,  and  hid  his  head  in  his  mantle,  entreating 
help.  "Go,"  said  Rabbi  Judah,  "for  this  thou  wast 
created."  Thereupon  it  was  said  in  heaven:  "Because 
he  showed  no  mercy,  no  mercy  shall  be  shown  to  him," 
and  suffering  was  decreed  for  him.  One  day  his  maid- 
servant wanted  to  pluck  out  a  nest  of  young  weasels 
which  she  found  in  his  house,  and  cast  them  out  to 
perish.  "Leave  them  in  peace,"  said  Rabbi  Judah,  "it 
is  said  of  God,  'His  tender  mercies  are  over  all  His 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  2$ 

works'  (Ps.,  145,  9)."  Then  it  was  said  in  heaven: 
"Because  he  showed  mercy,  mercy  shall  be  shown  to 
him,"  and  his  pain  ceased  forthwith.  To  develop  the 
feeling  for  which  Jewish  tenderness  more  than  fifteen 
hundred  years  ago  coined  the  significant  expression, 
Za'ar  Ba'ale  Hayyim,  this  naive  story  was  more  effective 
than  the  empty  babblings  of  hysterical  women  on  our  duty 
to  the  brute  creation.  The  Heder  boy,  whose  sole  aim 
was  to  search  out  and  know  the  teachings,  of  the  an- 
cients, derived  his  ideals  from  those  whose  lives  interest- 
ed him  in  the  measure  in  which  he  entered  into  their 
ideals. 

The  Heder  life  must  not  be  thought  of  as  a  life  of 
serious  tasks  only.  The  boys  had  more  opportunity  to 
play  tricks  there  than  in  a  modern  school.  Games  and 
youthful  merriment  were  quite  compatible  with  the  big 
Talmud  folios.  The  Heder  decidedly  had  its  gay  side. 
On  the  whole,  its  life  may  be  said  to  have  been  less  rule- 
bound  than  life  in  a  modern  school.  To  begin  with,  the 
chief  spur  to  study  was  the  expectation  of  reward  rather 
than  the  fear  of  punishment.  Following  in  the  footsteps 
of  old  Jewish  authorities  of  high  standing,  a  popular  book 
of  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  has  this  to 
s.ay  of  the  bringing  up  of  children :  "One  should  al- 
ways teach  a  child  in  pleasant  ways.  First  give  him 
fruit,  or  sugar,  or  honey  cake,  and  later  small  coins.  Then 
he  should  be  promised  clothes  as  a  present,  always  mak- 
ing the  reward  agree  with  his  intelligence  and  his  years. 
Then  tell  him,  if  he  will  study  diligently,  he  may  expect 
a  large  dowry  when  he  marries ;  and  later  he  should  be 
told,that  if  he  will  study  diligently,  he  will  be  ordained  and 
will  officiate  as  a  rabbi.  He  must  be  urged  on  until  the 
boy  himself  realizes  that  he  must  study  because  it  is  the 
will  of  God."  The  directions  to  teachers  are  of  similar 
tenor,  and  it  was  the  general  habit  of  teachers  to  attract 
the  children  by  kindness.  To  this  very  day  it  is  the  cus- 
tom, as  it  was  hundreds  of  years  ago,  for  the  teacher  to 
throw  sweets  or  a  few  pennies  on  the  alphabet  chart  when 
the  child  has  his  first  lesson  at  school,  saying  at  the  same 


20  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

time :  "This  an  angel  has  thrown  down  for  you,  because 
you  are  so  good."  In  some  congregations  the  teachers  used 
to  prepare  a  treat  for  the  children  on  Hamishah  Asar  be- 
Shebat,  and  on  Lag  ba-Omer,  when,  besides,  no  school 
sessions  were  held. 

The  teacher  had  neither  time  nor  disposition  to  play 
games  with  the  children.  His  place  was  taken  by  his 
assistant,  the  "Behelfer,"  who  called  for  the  children  at 
their  homes  and  took  them  back  after  school  hours,  and 
one  of  whose  duties  it  was  to  provide  for  the  entertain- 
ment and  recreation  of  his  charges.  The  Behelfer  was 
the  one  who  carved  the  wooden  swords  for  Tishah  be- 
Ab,  and  manufactured  the  flags  for  Simhat  Torah.  If 
the  boys  were  well-behaved,  he  allowed  them  to  be  pres- 
ent while  he  made  his  preparations  for  the  Purim  play, 
in  which  he  took  the  part  of  Mordecai  or  Haman,  or,  at  a 
pinch,  of  Esther  even.  The  big  boys,  who  presumably 
had  outgrown  the  services  of  the  Behelfer,  did  not  scorn 
to  buy  his  good-will,  sometimes  with  hard  cash.  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  important  to  be  in  his  good  graces,  else 
he  might  betray  their  pranks  to  the  teacher.  Besides, 
his  active  help  could  not  always  be  dispensed  with.  In 
summer  he  was  the  swimming  master,  and  in  winter  he 
taught  the  boys  how  to  skate,  the  two  most  delightful 
forms  of  amusement  known  to  Heder  boys.  But  even 
such  neutral  and  secular  interests  lying  at  the  periphery 
of  Heder  life  did  not  escape  its  genuinely  Jewish 
atmosphere.  The  boys  did  not  hesitate  to  call  a  certain 
fancy  figure  on  the  ice  the  "Wa-Yomer  David  run,"  be- 
cause it  was  executed  in  the  same  position  as  the  prayer 
beginning  with  these  words  was  said,  with  the  head 
resting  on  the  arm.  In  addition  to  all  these  accomplish- 
ments, the  Behelfer  was  an  adept  in  making  the  Dreher, 
and  this  game,  known  to  the  Greeks,  Romans  and  Ger- 
mans, was  also  given  a  Jewish  aspect.  It  was  played  only 
on  Hanukah,  but  then  most  vigorously.  The  "Kitot,"  the 
sections,  of  the  class  not  actively  engaged  with  the  teach- 
er, played  it  in  the  intervals  between  lessons  during  the 
Hanukah  days,  behind  the  teacher's  back,  of  course.  Its 


THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL.  2/ 

connection  with  Hanukah  was  established  by  interpreting 
the  letters  on  its  four  sides  as  the  initial  letters  of  the 
sentence,  Nes  gadol  hayah  sham,  "A  great  miracle  was 
done  there." 

And,  in  fact,  a  great  miracle  zi-as  done  there!  The 
wonderful  salvation  of  Israel  was  wrought  there,  in  the 
Heder !  Goethe  advises  us  "always  to  oppose  the  great 
masses  produced  by  the  historical  process  of  the  ages, 
to  the  perversities  of  the  fleeting  hour  as  they  arise." 
According  to  this,  the  perversities  that  result  when 
individual  observations  are  over-emphasized  and 
ephemeral  fashions  are  followed,  ought  to  be  opposed  by 
the  Jewish  school  as  it  was  developed  in  the  course  of 
twenty  centuries  and  more.  An  important  and  pro- 
found lesson  will  be  derived,  which  the  Talmud  ex- 
presses in  the  words:  "He  who  says,  nothing  exists  for 
me  but  the  Jewish  religion,  not  even  the  Jewish  relig- 
ion exists  for  him."  Although  the  Jewish  school  was  the 
nursery  of  all  the  manifold  aspects  of  the  Jewish  spirit, 
yet  it  brought  forth  not  only  heroes  of  the  intellect,  but 
religious  geniuses  as  well.  If  hitherto  the  Jews  have 
put  no  pictures  of  saints  in  their  synagogues,  it  has  not 
been  for  lack  of  saints,  else  they  might  long  ago  have 
resorted  to  the  device  of  borrowing  them  from  the  other 
nations.  It  was  because  the  Jews  met  their  ideal  saint 
outside  of  the  synagogue  as  well  as  inside.  He  was  a 
thinking  and  an  acting  saint,  no  less  than  a  praying  saint. 

The  most  significant  truth  to  be  learned  from  the  long 
history  of  Jewish  education  remains  to  be  mentioned.  All 
true  culture  issues  from  a  unified  Weltanschauung, 
from  a  decided  view  of  life  and  men  and  the  world,  and 
in  the  last  resort  the  value  of  culture  depends  upon  the 
help  it  gives  us  in  acquiring  and  formulating  such  a  Welt- 
anschauung. But  we  must  not  expect  to  find  it  at  re- 
ligious tea  parties,  at  which  weak  tea  is  served  with  still 
weaker  religion.  When  it  became  the  fad  of  the  lady  of 
leisure,  the  doom  of  the  Jewish  school  was  pronounced, 
and  if  it  is  to  resume  its  old  place  and  significance  in 
Jewish  life,  it  must  cease  to  be  the  supernumerary  ad- 


28  THE    JEWISH    PRIMARY    SCHOOL. 

junct  of  a  person  or  a  cause.  It  must  again  be  an  in- 
dependent institution,  fulfilling  its  task  autonomously. 
It  must  be,  as  it  was,  the  focus  of  Jewish  life,  of  the  Jew- 
ish intellect,  and  of  the  Jewish  religion. 


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